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Amazon France has told The Bookseller that customers should “keep listening” for news on a Kindle Unlimited launch in the country, despite announcements this week that the e-book subscription service had been made available in both Spain and Italy.
Amazon.es and Amazon.it are now offering the service for €9.99 (£7.82) a month, with access to 700,000 titles.
Amazon had been expected to launch the service in France and elsewhere in Europe after the summer, but the critical mass of e-books, estimated at about 25,000 titles, has not yet been reached in France. For the moment, only Fleurus, a subsidiary of Média Participations, has announced it has signed up with Kindle Unlimited.
French trade publication Livres Hebdo has reported that Amazon is having difficulties convincing French publishers to make their catalogues available, while online book news site ActuaLitté reported this week that digital distributor Immatériel had told its customers that signing up with the service would “be shooting oneself in the foot”. Immatériel calculated that publishers would lose more than 40% of their revenues with Kindle Unlimited compared to unit sales. Other observers told ActuaLitté that unlike in Spain and Italy, France has several digital book distributors that “work hard to promote catalogues”, meaning Amazon is “not in a position of supremacy”.
A spokesperson for Amazon.fr said: “We always try to extend our innovations to other markets, but today we must ask you to keep listening.”